Antonio Luque Receives $60,000 Boer Award

Antonio Luque is the recipient of the 2015 Karl W. Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit, an award named for Boer, a scientist from the University of Delaware and founder of its Institute for Energy Conversion. Courtesy of the Karl W. Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust.

A professor and director of the Institute of Solar Energy at the Technical University of Madrid in Spain, Luque is the inventor of the intermediate-band solar cell, which raises the efficiency limit from 41 percent to 63 percent. Luque also invented the bifacial silicon solar cell, which is active on both sides, and is able to collect both direct light and reflected light; this has led to cells with very high practical efficiency.

In addition to the Boer medal, Luque has also received the Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the Development of Photovoltaic Solar Energy, among other honors. He is a founding member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain.

”Professor Luque is an extraordinary scholar who has made exceptional contributions to the field of solar energy,” said Michael T. Klein, executive director of the Karl W. Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust at the University of Delaware. “His selection for the Boer award is a fitting testimonial to the impact his work has had on the science and technology of renewable energy.”

The Karl W. Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit is awarded biannually to someone who — through research, development, application, economic enterprise or policies — has made extraordinary contributions to the fields of solar energy, wind energy or other forms of renewable energy that have been recognized nationally and internationally.